France Invading Austria 1805 AAR

[MarshallEllis]

Hey guys:

Going to be sparce on the forum over the next week so I thought I would leave you with a (requested aar) France vs Austria AAR.

The situation is that I am France playing against 6 AI players. I declared war on Austria and am moving against them in a big way!

BTW: Got lucky since in my turn, I DOW'd Austria and Austria DOW'd Bavaria and I gained control of Bavaria (Livin good).

Take a look...

[fjbn]

Mack!!! What the hell is Mack doing? He is commanding the main Austrian army and leaving Charles in Italy[:@]. Marshall, I didn't want to tell you but you are cheating, and don't tell me it´s just history![;)]. This is not history, it´s just a massacre.

[MarshallEllis]

Battles:

Didn't save my battles screens BUT here is my move:

Little Coriscan moved through Bavaria and attacked Mack at Linz. Outflank vs Outflank. Napoloeon committed the guards in round II and broke the Austrians. Austria lost a total of about 20% of their force while France lost about 10%. Not too terrible for Austria.

Murat moved into Venice and attacked Charles. Murat wins battle and immediately sieges Venice and takes it!

BUT...

Austrian move:

Mack counter attacked AND WON battle pushing the "Little Corsican" back into Bavaria.

Here is our current map...

[fjbn]

Mack won! I can't believe it!: By the way, talking about Napo's tactics, I love them! He uses to choose outflank, so you must only choose cordon and say: "does it hurt, darling?". About AI tactics, I don't know Mack rating in PC game, but I tkink Mack is a 1-3-4, and choosing outflank with a strategic rating 1 is a very risky idea.

[ktotwf]

Alright! Thanks Marshall Ellis, for answering my request. I love this game already.

[&o]

[Forward_March]

That's one of the many things that I love in this game! That anything can happen due to a chit choice and some bad luck...or good luck depending on your perspective. I've seen little Bavaria beat a stack commanded by Napoleon. I've seen a massive force of Brits (if you can call any concentration of British troops massive) defeated three times in a row by Swedes under Bennigsen.

EIA is the best kind of wargame, IMHO. It keeps you sweating and scheming even away from the map. I can only imagine the amount of e-mail that will be generated by said scheming....

....now, if I only had the patience to wait happily...

[MarshallEllis]

LOL!

I'm slightly emabarrased that Mack kicked Napoleon back into Bavaria cause as everybody stated, he's terrible BUT when you roll ones ... the enemy doesn't have to be very good!

This situation was caused by a few things, Mack was setup to take Bavaria NOT to confront Napoleon! He was setup in Linz to take Munich. Charles was setup in Venice to be flexible enough to move to Vienna, Munich OR simply protect Venice. This is a standard AI setup that Austria frequently uses. The idea was to allow Mack to take Venice and Charles to be ready for the "Little Coriscan".

Where the luck came in ....

Luck came to me when I was chosen as the major controlling power for Bavaria when Austria DOW'd Bavaria at the same time I DOW'd Austria! That alone gained me 1 pp, one corps with 11i and 2c

My dearest Murat was able to brutally pound Charles in a slug fest that the French won!

Where my luck ran out...

Mack?!?! Are you kidding me?!? I could withdraw and still beat him (LOL!) BUT not when you roll ones!

Thanks guys, this is a lot of fun BUT now I'm off to work and will be sparce over the next week due to some traveling!

Thank you

[Murat]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

My dearest Murat was able to brutally pound Charles in a slug fest that the French won!

Of course [8|] What did you expect? Murat is God (only barely outshined by Nappy) [:D]

Contrary to popular belief, Outflank is NOT always used by France (actually due to the Pinning force 1st round, it is not always as useful as other strategies) The most successful chit picker I ever saw would literally pick the chit blind. Nothing like a little escalated assault to break up that pinning force or the suprise of the Turks using Echelon.

[fjbn]

I desagree. Most of the people use defence, maybe 70% of the times, and escalated assault is much worse than assault against defence. Escalated assault is good only if you are quite sure that your opponent will choose cordon. I suppose that this won't be employed against Charles, because if he chooses outflank and achieves it there will be a massacre.

[YohanTM2]

ORIGINAL: fjbn

I desagree. Most of the people use defence, maybe 70% of the times, and escalated assault is much worse than assault against defence. Escalated assault is good only if you are quite sure that your opponent will choose cordon. I suppose that this won't be employed against Charles, because if he chooses outflank and achieves it there will be a massacre.

70% choice of defense seems quite high. If you felt that 7/10 times your opponent would pick one chit it would be a very short game.

[Murat]

My basic point was that it is better to be unpredictable. Every attack chit and defense chit has a counter and if you are predictable, you will get countered. Yes, someone may do well against me by picking the same chit 70% of the time at the start, but I WILL adjust and when I do, it just takes 1 catastrophe and none of those other picks mattered (statistically getting the "perfect" counter might happen by chance once or twice in a game, if you are predictable, it will happen at the worst times and more often).

[eg0master]

ORIGINAL: Murat

My basic point was that it is better to be unpredictable. Every attack chit and defense chit has a counter [...]

yes, the EiA system is just a fancy version of paper, rock, scissors with a few twists.

And the agony on the opponent when you draw a random chit is prizeless... Is it random or did he fake it?

EiA is like paper, rock, scissors with a poker twist... [:D]